The Witness (35 page)

“And it explains why he might be let into their homes; they knew him,” Connor realized.

“Henry kept track of the girls—you don’t think he might keep track of a boy? He knew enough not to want to claim him, but to instead leave Daniel as his major heir. Connor, I may just be chasing a phantom that doesn’t exist. Nothing yet says there is a son out there, let alone one that would commit two murders like this and attack Marie.”

“But it explains why you’ve been going back through the phone calls the sisters have received, the mail—looking for signs he made contact with them after that press conference.”

“For what it’s worth, Sam doesn’t see it as likely. He investigated everyone else in Henry’s past over the years, including keeping track of the two sisters, and Sam can’t imagine Henry having a son that he didn’t get asked to check out and keep tabs on too. As far as Sam knows Marie and Tracey are Henry’s only children.”

“Which takes us back to theory one—‘I know the family secret’ is the fact Amy is alive, and ‘pay me to go away’ is Richard Wise laying down the marker for how ugly this is going to get if he’s not fully paid off.”

“There is evidence our New York shooter is in town; we’ve got his car, and Sam’s place got searched,” Marsh reminded him.

“And opposite of that theory two—Henry has another kid out there not recognized in the will, and he wants money from the family to go away. He killed the two people who could identify him as a way to deliver his demand. Whoever grabbed Marie tonight was thin, young, and did not have a New York accent. He was definitely angry he hadn’t been paid. And we both know that while the reporters are clamoring for that second message, they don’t have it yet. This guy tonight knew something that only the killer would know.”

“I don’t know, Connor. If all the pieces were fitting in place, we’d have this solved. We need fingerprints, blood work, trace evidence from one of the crime scenes—something to help sort this out. It keeps coming back to not enough facts. If there is a son out there, we have next to nothing right now to point us in a direction to search to even confirm he exists.”

Connor heard Marie shut off the water. “I’ll pick you up first thing tomorrow morning and bring whatever Bryce can add to this. We’re going back to those crime scenes to canvas neighbors again.”

“I’ll be expecting you. Tell Marie from me that I’m very grateful she’s okay.”

“You’ll have Tracey prepped not to push for details tonight?”

“She’ll handle it smart.”

“Thanks, Marsh.”

Connor closed the phone and knew he needed to call the chief. But first he just forced himself to take a couple more deep breaths and get past the last half hour. Bryce’s call had shaken him harder than any message he’d ever answered, and the reality of that was going to take some time to absorb. Marie would come through this okay even if he had to stand and take a bullet for her; he couldn’t handle her getting hurt any more by this.

He stepped toward the hallway door and pushed in numbers. One thing at a time. The first was just to survive tonight.

“Chief? It’s Connor. There’s been trouble at the gallery.”

“You can’t pay him,” Luke said, watching Daniel prowl around Henry’s former home office like a caged cat. His call had caught Daniel just getting ready to leave for the night, and Luke had come over to deliver the news in person. Daniel had been talking to Marie less than half an hour before the attack; that had made this reaction all the more intense, and Luke was hoping he could defuse it.

“Two former employees dead, Marie terrorized, don’t tell me what I can’t do with the money, Luke. Frankly right now I’d like to light a bonfire and use it as kindling.”

Luke held up his hand and offered reality. “If this is a young guy thinking the family owes him money, he’s already disturbed enough to do two brutal murders. Handing him money and having him disappear would be to set up someone else to be dead in the future. A guy doesn’t kill twice in one night and become a saint for the rest of his life.

“Second—if it’s our guy from New York who did the killings, then he’s after Amy, and regardless of whether Richard Wise gets his money the hatred has gone on too long—he’ll stay on it until he has Amy dead, and if he goes through her sisters to make that happen he won’t care. I’m not going to be surprised to find our New York shooter has co-opted some local talent to help him out, maybe even to do the killings for him. Getting into Sam’s place, following the sisters, killing the two employees, dumping his car, staying out of sight of the local cops who have a fairly recent photo of him—that is a lot of ground for one person to manage in a city he doesn’t know well. So he’s probably arranged local help. He wants Amy; that is the job he’ll sit back to handle himself. The rest is just details.”

Daniel finally sat back down. “How do you sleep at night?”

“I don’t,” Luke replied. “I need to know if Henry Benton had another child, and I need to know that by any means you can dream up to find out.”

Daniel tapped a pen on the desk, thinking. “Was there anything in the bookkeeper’s effects that might have been from his period of time working here? Any other file boxes in storage, a ledger, anything in a safe-deposit box?”

“He kept every receipt in his life, the same as he did for Henry, but so far nothing is popping up as being something more than his own personal papers,” Luke replied, having checked with the officer sorting through the files.

“Then if Henry knew he had a son, the evidence will be somewhere in this house and in his personal records.”

“Is it possible Henry had a son he didn’t know existed?”

“Sure. If an affair led to a pregnancy and the lady wasn’t inclined to come get more money out of Henry than he offered when they split up. But you’d think either the mom or at least the son would have made contact over the years. We’re assuming if this son exists he’s younger than Tracey and Marie, not older?”

“A guess, but probably in his late twenties.”

“If he’s not a minor and his mother kept anything at all around the house of the letters Henry liked to write or spoke at all of who his father was, the trail back to Henry wouldn’t be difficult for someone to push against and follow. There should have been contact with Henry at some point.”

“Assume there was a payoff to the mother fifteen to twenty-five years ago. Would it have gone through the Benton Group accounts?”

“No. Henry kept a bright line between private and public business. It would have been a cash payment taken from a private account. One his personal bookkeeper would have probably handled and his chauffeur went along to deliver.” Daniel grimaced just saying it.

Luke nodded. “It’s a working theory we need to either prove or knock down so we quit chasing it. For what it’s worth, Sam doesn’t think a son exists. Henry would have wanted to know about him and would have kept track of him.”

“I’d agree with Sam.” Daniel pulled out a ring of keys. “Come on; I’ll show you what there is to work with.”

He led the way through the house and opened the file-storage room. The boxes were neat, orderly, and shelved floor to ceiling. “I’ve eliminated the boxes on the left, and when everything has sorted itself out the plan is to have them shredded. These thirty boxes—I’m finding everything in them from receipts to phone-message notes. Henry apparently asked his personal bookkeeper to take care of all the paper, and so it was just filed away as it got created. The personal bank accounts—most Henry closed years ago and rolled into the Benton Group—but the canceled checks are still here filed in among all the other papers. I’m guessing we are not going to find one actually made out to the lady involved. It will be for something else and converted to the cash Henry needed. It wouldn’t have been uncommon for his wife to be going through the receipts or the mail as it came in. The last payment to Marie and Tracey’s aunt that I found had
florist
scrawled at the bottom.”

“A lot of flowers.”

“Yes.” Daniel shut off the light. “I’ll have my assistant come help with the search; if the evidence is here, we should be able to find it.”

“Henry never mentioned anything that might cause you to think back and wonder if he was talking about a son?”

“There’s nothing I can recall that even glimmers at more children than Marie and Tracey.”

Luke picked up his coat, and Daniel walked outside with him.

“Take reasonable precautions the next few weeks, Daniel, no jogging alone, buzzing people into the apartment, leaving car doors unlocked—”

Daniel smiled. “Don’t worry about me. There’s security all over this place, the office, and they’ve been rolling by the apartment building regularly. I’m covered.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Luke started his car. “I’ll be in touch.” “You’ll be my first call if I find anything,” Daniel promised.

Chapter Twenty

CAROLINE LIFTED A HAND TO MARSH, sliding into a seat in the restaurant that put her near the window and traffic flowing in and out and far enough away from the table with Marie and Tracey and the two cops not to interrupt their lunch. She ordered just the day’s special, a bowl of soup, knowing it would be served quickly, and then settled back to observe.

Marie looked better.

Amy had sent her with the precise request to report back a firsthand impression of how Marie was doing four days after she had a knife at her throat. Given the state Amy was in over the incident, Caroline thought the request reasonable. She’d left Amy with one of Jonathan’s guys and come to town to get her an answer.

Watching Marie, Caroline put her at a little nervous, not enough sleep, but doing a good job of staying with the conversation around her at the table. Connor, sitting beside Marie, didn’t look like he’d slept much better. Beyond a glance over and a smile, he’d otherwise shown no sign he had seen her come in.
Better that way
, Caroline thought. The cops knew what was in the manila envelope she carried; let them finish their meals with their ladies and enjoy the slice of normalcy before business returned.

The waitress brought her soup.

Ah, there was Bryce. She’d missed him in the first scan of the room, but he was here eating lunch and watching the crowd too.

Caroline didn’t know if anything in the envelope she carried would help, but it was full of photos Amy had marked and annotated with memories from New York. At least it was another set of faces to watch for in an otherwise wait-and-see game for who might be around. Amy, more than anyone else, needed to know if the two murders and the knife attack represented new trouble appearing or a wave of old business relating to herself now reaching out toward her sisters.

Connor had been smart to get Marie back out in public, if not relaxing, then at least getting settled and okay with being in a crowd. Sykes had plastered Marie’s photo on the front page again, and Marie’s instinct would be to hide in the gallery flat and not venture out. Going shopping together, then stopping at a restaurant for lunch had been good first choices for Connor to make.

Sykes had sources. Caroline didn’t particularly like what he wrote, but the facts were solid. The story of its being a robbery had shifted toward its being more a mugging. Not perfect with all the facts, but close enough someone had talked to Sykes before he wrote that piece. Someone inside. They were seeing crime-scene details and photos in the newspaper before the reports were being finished, now this breach—the chief was going to fire someone just as soon as he figured out the leak and probably do it in a spectacular fashion.

Caroline ate her lunch and thought about her own Christmas shopping. She knew Amy had started hers on that last trip with Luke, and from the looks of the sacks around Marie and Tracey they had also begun theirs this morning. Maybe Amy could get talked into going a town over and spending a day at the mall—the excursion would do them both good. They couldn’t help solve these two murders, and sitting around and waiting for a face to appear in the crowd was not a good option.

The group at the table rose, Marsh holding the chair for Tracey, Connor helping Marie with her packages. Making the quick decision that it was best to be ahead of them on this walk, Caroline tucked money for her lunch on the bill, left with her drink refill, and slipped on her coat. The group would be a minute or two just getting their things gathered together. The sisters would want to ask about Amy, and Caroline wasn’t comfortable doing that here. She caught Marsh’s eye and nodded to the door, then headed out ahead of them.